Didn’t get out of the house until around noon to go eat dim sum with some of the guests coming to the party. My brother didn’t join us because of class but my little cousin with my 3rd Uncle came with my grandparents and I.

A little background about my little cousin. She’s currently 4 and an half years old. Looks extremely similar to my 3rd Uncle. (Chinese people order all aunts, uncles, relatives, etc all my numbers) Cute at times but like all kids, can be very annoying. My grandmother says she is exactly like me when I was young, but I see huge differences though. One of them being, she talks SO MUCH. My 3rd Uncle was joking with me saying that if she doesn’t get to talk, she’ll die. No wonder HK people love to talk and love being LOUD.

Dim sum was followed by Mahjohng for the guests that wanted to play. I went and got some shoes with Sophia around the Miramar centre. For some reason I had a tough time accepting studs on my shoes. I had Sophia kept questioning why. Probably because I associate studs with people that are into the rocker style, which I didn’t think would suit me very well. In the end, I got Gladiator styled shoes with the studs that turned out well. Sophia always makes me take huge leaps in terms of my fashion sense.

Headed back to Miramar centre and went to a Makeup /Salon shop where my grandmother and aunt were already getting their makeup done by Chen Mun Fei. Those not aren’t familiar with him, he’s the best makeup artist in HK and is the son of who is deemed the “Father of Makeup”. I waited for my turn to get my makeup done by him and had my hair also done by one of his students. Originally was going to have my hair put into a French Crown but then I was rearranged to just have loose curls, which still turned out nice.

Night of my grandmother’s huge birthday bash was a success and everyone had tons of fun. We had about 25 tables so that’s about 250+ people. We had to have the whole restaurant booked. You’re 71 only once right? The show never stopped. Opening was Lion Dance by one of the clubs in HK followed by presents being given to my Grandmother on stage. Tons of family photos. The food was spectacular with Shark Fin soup, Abalone, and other various dishes. We were also happy to have Sit Ka Yin, Chow Yun Fat’s mother and others come join this joyous celebration. I finally got to dig my face into some really good butt buns (sao bao). I’ve been waiting 3 years for it and relished the moment! Lots of prizes were handed out. My grandma even purposely brought over tons of Ginseng from Canada as part of the prizes. (I had no idea Canada was known for that.) We had different people perform on the stage for us while my Uncle MC’ed the whole night. It was so nice to see so many of my grandparents friends come out to see them. My grandfather even had 4 tables worth of friends that he knew from back when he worked on a UMS ship. All the ship company’s exec’s came to wish my grandmother a happy birthday and gave them a beautiful ship made out of gold. My dad’s side of the family is pretty big and all of them came. I honestly have a tough time with my brother learning what to call them by. (Western people don’t differentiate family and relatives the way the Chinese do. )The party ended late and we were all exhausted. Without going into anymore detail, all in all, everyone had a good time.

I’ve been doing a terrible job keeping up with my HK days. You know the feeling where you’ve had a long day and want to do nothing but shower and go straight to bed? Exactly that. To do some justice I’ll continue to document each day but they don’t necessarily correspond chronologically to the date that I post them.

Day 4 HK: My brother headed out early to math class and my dad and I joined him later in the afternoon. So what did I have for breakfast? Fish ball noodles with cold iced tea. Hmm. Oh wait! Also freshly made right out of the oven pineapple bun. Whoever has eaten a pineapple bun elsewhere, you need to eat one here to taste how it’s really done. After waiting at the Chinese Chiropractor for my brother (after his math class) we went to go eat some more cold tofu dessert together. That can settle in my stomach any time of the day.

Grandma’s big birthday bash is the next day.

PANIC.

Called up Michelle to take me everywhere to find a dress & shoes. Who would have thought finding a dress would be so hard in HK. Which makes sense since I’m not a total HK fob and some of those dresses honestly does not match me at all. Tried to look for something more classic and elegant not short short dresses and very low cut upper half. OH! NOT black and white either. Chinese people associate those colours with death. Kept finding so many decent dresses that were black. I thought it’d be more colourful. Browsed through Time’s Square lower floor, Sogo mall, and designer stores that brought much dismay. Surprisingly, BCBG here doesn’t have a very big dress collection as I would have expected like the one on Bloor and in Eatons back in Toronto. Finally, the last store we went into ended up being the place. CK. They had a lot of one piece dresses which made me happy but also made me look way too old. So what I ended up opting for was the one piece sleeveless orange (valencia) dress with a hanging collar. Bright and suitable for my grandma’s birthday. Luckily it was early in the afternoon otherwise I’d be competing with 3/4 of Hong Kong. If you want a peek at my dress just head over to my flickr account to look at my pictures.

Dinner was at a cafe my dad has been to before that is famous for the Malay Thai chicken rice. Brother had steak and I just had a club sandwhich. Haven’t had time to digest all the food from yesterday and today. I’ll bring my camera next time to take pictures of all these food. At least you can all eat it with your eyes.

I was half asleep the entire day and my body kept wanting to go to sleep really badly. Despite all of that, I was starving the morning (which is also the time when I eat my massive dinner in Toronto) at the Immigration office. After waiting for about 3 hours or so, my dad bought a fish burger from the McDonalds to throw something in my stomach. Sad that I gave away my first in like 4 years to a fish burger but still tasted good.

(Disclaimer: the rest of this post might make you hungry)

So then we met up with my dad’s highschool friend and his daughter at Peking Garden (rated 3 Michelin Stars) and had a very decent lunch. My brother really wanted to just devour everything like we normally do in Toronto but refrained ourselves. There’s all these crazy deserts that we had. There was this bun with caramelized bananas on the inside toped with icing sugar and some other stuff that tasted so unique! A desert that was dipped into beer creating this hard shell while the inside was soft and fluffy with apple was our last desert. Very interesting dishes we had but none of us we’re complaining about the quality one bit.

A pretty light lunch for my brother and I which my dad picked up right away so we headed to this little small restaurant and had the cold tofu dessert. Finished that and walked over to another restaurant to have a bowl of wonton noodles. Let’s just say…Toronto’s version does not compare to the one that’s down in my stomach.

Window shopping at Times Square. I felt like I was walking in Eaton Centre but with all the bloor street designers stores also inside. Tons of American stores (ie. Club Monaco, Zara, Tommy Hilifiger, etc.) which kind of shocked me. My dad called this my pre-shopping as the next week or so I can just go crazy and… We all know what happens next. Made our way through the massive crowds of people around Causeway Bay and went to this Western Style Cafe. For those of you that have ever been to those Cantonese Cafe’s like the Hollywood Cafe beside Market Village in Markham, Ontario, it’s exactly like that. Once more, 10x better no doubt. I also had my first Iced Hong Kong style Milk tea and it is so damn good.

I’ll end this post on a quote that Jenny always says to me when we have beer from a show (don’t know which one). Exactly my sentiments towards HK food.

I think I’m done packing. But that’s what we say every time and we always end up forgetting something. Might have the same familiar feeling in a few hours. Flight is at 10a.m. with a stop over at Chicago before landing into the HK sauna. Not excited yet because we all dread the long plane hours. Time to catch whatever sleep I can get and somehow adjust to that HK time schedule. (I really don’t have a master plan so jet lag is probably inevitable.)